Updates and Newsletters: The main news stories from the major sources, selected, compiled, and occasionally commented on by Michael Novakhov ("Mike Nova") | Public RSS Feeds on the various topics of Global Security | Topics oriented news reviews

Iran to have Internet 'smart filtering' within monthsAl-ArabiyaTehran already blocks access to popular websites including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to stop Iranians from surfing content seen as immoral or undermining the Islamic regime. (Shutterstock). Tweet. Text size A A A. AFP, Tehran Friday, 14 November ...and more »

Russian soldiers parachuted into open fields in western Serbia on Friday as part of an unprecedented joint military drill that has stirred controversy in the European Union candidate-country given the West-Russia standoff over Ukraine. The one-day anti-terrorist exercise, around 50 km (30 miles) from Serbia's border with NATO-member Croatia, illustrated the balancing-act Belgrade faces; safeguarding relations with its big-power ally while pursuing closer integration with Europe at a...

Report: Obama immigration plan expected next weekThe HillPresident Obama plans to unveil a comprehensive immigration plan through executive action as early as next week, Fox News reported Wednesday. Citing a source close to the White House, Fox said Obama's 10-part agenda was contained in a draft ...and more »

Turkey's Foreign Minister on Friday described an assault on U.S. sailors in Istanbul this week as reprehensible and vowed that the attackers would “pay the price for their actions.” Members of the nationalist Turkish Youth Union attacked three U.S. sailors on a crowded street in Istanbul on Wednesday, shouting “Yankee go home,” throwing paint and trying to pull hoods over their heads. Video footage was later posted on the group's website. Twelve people were detained but...

Putin slams G20 for imposing sanctions over UkrainePress Trust of IndiaMoscow, Nov 14 (AFP) President Vladimir Putin today slammed G20 member countries for imposing sanctions on Russia, saying this violated the group's principles, but said he did not plan to raise the issue at the summit in Australia. Putin told the TASS state ...and more »

On the day The Imitation Game hits cinemas, a look at how Allied codebreakers untangled the Enigma

Like all the best cryptography, the Enigma machine is simple to describe, but infuriating to break.

Straddling the border between mechanical and electrical, Enigma looked from the outside like an oversize typewriter. Enter the first letter of your message on the keyboard and a letter lights up showing what it has replaced within the encrypted message. At the other end, the process is the same: type in the ciphertext and the letters which light are the decoded missive.

World leaders are arriving in Brisbane, Australia for a two-day meeting of the world's top 20 economic powers expected to focus on global finances, climate change and Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived Friday in the eastern coastal city, after Kyiv accused Russia of sending a fresh influx of troops and weapons into eastern Ukraine. Also, four Russian warships have entered international waters off Australia's northeastern coast. Australian warships were sent to...

A new immigration battle is brewing in Washington amid reports President Barack Obama is planning unilateral action that would protect up to five million undocumented immigrants from deportation. Officials familiar with the plan say Obama could make an announcement as early as next week, or wait until next month after Congress approves a budget. Whenever it happens, the move is guaranteed to anger Republicans, who are already preparing efforts to block it. House of...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia plans to create its own "Wikipedia" to ensure its citizens have access to more "detailed and reliable" information about their country, the presidential library said on Friday.

José Luis Abarca accused of deaths of six people on night of terror that culminated in probable massacre of 43 students

The former mayor of the southern Mexican city of Iguala has been charged with the murder of six people who died in a chain of confusing events that began when municipal police attacked a convoy of student teachers on 26 September.

The attacks on the students took place during a night of terror that included the arrest, subsequent disappearance and probable massacre of 43 students after police handed them over to a local drug gang.

U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel says U.S. nuclear arsenal personnel are suffering from low morale, mismanagement and staffing shortages that could undermine the group's safety, security and effectiveness. In announcing Pentagon reviews of the nuclear mission, Hagel told reporters on Friday there has been a consistent lack of investment and support for the U.S. nuclear force. He said he is ordering widespread changes to how the nuclear arsenal is managed to reverse leadership...

Antibiotics bought from Mahawar Pharmaceuticals withdrawn, after quantities of zinc phosphide discovered at its factory

Health officials investigating the deaths of more than 13 women who died after attending government-run family planning camps in eastern India believe that they were killed by medicine contaminated with rat poison.

All antibiotics bought from Mahawar Pharmaceuticals, a factory in the the eastern city of Raipur, the state capital, have now been withdrawn, the Press Trust of India reported.

Mikhail Lesin, head of the state-controlled entertainment giant Gazprom-Media, has called for a vote of Ekho Moskvy's board of directors that could determine the future of one of the last independent media outlets in Russia.

Newly exposed files show how victims were betrayed by political interference in trial and how the pill has remained on sale

The dark shadow of thalidomide is still with us. The original catastrophe maimed 20,000 babies and killed 80,000: it remains the greatest manmade global disaster. Now evidence has been uncovered that the pharmaceutical outrage it is nothing less was compounded by a judicial scandal that has suppurated all these years.

It is exposed in a large number of documents discovered in the state archives of North Rhine-Westphalia by a researcher for the UK Thalidomide Trust. The papers, which have been examined and authenticated by the international law firm of Ince & Co, speak to political interference that violated the constitutional division of power between the legislative, the executive and the judiciary. And more than half a century since the pills threat to an embryo was proven, the company that produced the first disaster has continued to sell the drug in parts of Latin America, on prescription only, where babies continued to be born with malformations similar to the survivors from the 1960s.

Islamic State sets sights on Saudi ArabiaBBC NewsIn a 17-minute audio message, purportedly from its elusive leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the group sets its sights firmly on Saudi Arabia, birthplace of Islam and the world's largest oil producer and exporter. The speaker does not refer to it as Saudi Arabia, ...and more »

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is sending a special envoy to Russia next week in an apparent attempt to ease diplomatic isolation. In a short dispatch, North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency announced Friday that Choe Ryong Hae, a secretary of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, will visit Russia soon. In an official statement, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Choe would visit Russia November 17-24. During the week-long visit, the two sides are expected to discuss...

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s looming action on immigration is poised to become the first, real opportunity for the new Republican leadership in Congress to demonstrate that they can avoid the pitfalls of opposing the president’s policies and unite around a governing agenda of their own.

By insisting that he will take unilateral action to overhaul the nation’s immigration system, Mr. Obama has delivered his adversaries a compelling political target. In Asia, Mr. Obama effectively said “I told you so” to Republicans, saying he had given them every opportunity to avoid the action he was about to take.

“I indicated to Speaker Boehner several months ago that if Congress failed to act, I would use all lawful authority that I possess,” Mr. Obama said at a news conference in Myanmar. “That’s going to happen. And that’s going to happen before the end of the year.”

Administration officials said the president would shield from deportation up to five million people living illegally in the United States and provide many of them with work permits. The president also plans to refocus the activities of the nation’s 12,000 immigration agents on deportations for convicted criminals and people who have recently crossed the border illegally.

Republicans, who next year will control both chambers of Congress, have seized on the prospect of what they have called Mr. Obama’s “executive amnesty.” They are warning the president and his Democratic allies that such action could trigger lawsuits, legislative gridlock on other issues and even the threat of another budget stalemate and government shutdown.

House Speaker John A. Boehner and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who will become the majority leader next year, have joined the chorus of outrage from some of their most conservative members. Mr. Boehner left open the possibility this week that House Republicans might shut down the government in a standoff on the immigration issue.

“The president is playing with fire here, and when you play with fire, you get burned,” Mr. Boehner told Republican leaders in a closed session on Thursday, according to a person in the room. “We don’t know when exactly he’ll do it or how exactly he’ll do it. But if he proceeds, we are going to fight it.”

But first impressions matter, and many Republican strategists worry about political damage if the party’s first action on Capitol Hill is a protracted budget battle that leads to a shutdown — much as occurred after the shutdown over Mr. Obama’s health care law in 2013.

For his part, Mr. McConnell has repeatedly insisted that the Republican Party has no intention of shutting down the government, and has vowed after Republican victories in the midterm elections that his party could get things done in Washington.

“This gridlock and dysfunction can be ended,” Mr. McConnell said in a news conference on Nov. 5.

But ending gridlock could be more difficult in an environment where Republicans are focused on what they consider to be another example of the president’s executive overreach.

Republicans believe their best option to block the president’s immigration actions is an upcoming spending bill, which must pass by Dec. 11 in order to fund the government through the next year. In the Senate, three Republicans — Ted Cruz of Texas, Mike Lee of Utah and Jeff Sessions of Alabama — have taken the lead in urging their colleagues to oppose any spending bill unless it includes provisions to stop the president from acting on immigration.

“Our office stands ready to use any procedural means available to make sure the president can’t enact his illegal executive amnesty,” Catherine Frazier, a spokeswoman for Mr. Cruz, said.

In addition, Representative Matt Salmon, Republican of Arizona, sent a letter with 63 signatures Thursday to the chairman and the ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, urging them not to send any spending bill to the Senate that does not include “language that would prohibit funding for the president’s reported intentions to create work permits and green cards for undocumented immigrants currently in the United States.”

But the dynamics of such a move are complicated. Representative Harold Rogers of Kentucky, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, has made it clear that while he opposes any executive action on immigration, he is hesitant to include such language in his must-pass spending bill, as it could lead to a government shutdown.

Others in the party are less hesitant. Some House Republicans have previously said they considered impeachment proceedings a viable option if Mr. Obama moves forward with his executive actions.

“The audacity of this president to think he can completely destroy the rule of law with the stroke of a pen is unfathomable to me,” Representative Steve King, an Iowa Republican who is an outspoken opponent of an immigration overhaul, said in a statement Thursday. “It is unconstitutional, it is cynical, and it violates the will of the American people. Our republic will not stand if we tolerate a president who is set upon the complete destruction of the rule of law.”

Amidst speculation that U.S.-led airstrikes had last week killed or injured Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), the group released an audio message on Thursday from Baghdadi himself where he called on his supporters to “erupt volcanoes of jihad”, saying ISIS would “never abandon fighting”, adding: “they will be triumphant, even if only one man of them is left.” While Baghdadi apparently was not killed in last week’s raid on the Iraqi city of Mosul, the rumors nonetheless raised the question: can ISIS survive and thrive without its mysterious frontman?

“Baghdadi is more like a CEO than a traditional battlefield leader,” says Justin Dargin, a Middle East scholar at the University of Oxford. Unlike the late al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, Baghdadi does not present himself as a charismatic, messianic leader to his followers. A November report from security intelligence firm The SoufanGroup agrees, saying Baghdadi “has not needed to be a visionary or a natural leader, just strong enough to impose his will more effectively than anyone else.”

Nicknamed “the invisible sheikh” by his followers, Baghdadi has been careful to reveal very little about himself, aside from a few videos released by ISIS, and even reportedly wears a mask when addressing ISIS fighters. Experts say this is partially a response to what happened to other leaders who were hunted down once their secret locations were discovered, including his predecessor Jordanian Islamist Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, who was killed in a U.S. bombing raid in 2006. Baghdadireportedly went to Afghanistan in the late 1990s with Zarqawi, who went on to found al-Qaeda in Iraq, the group that would eventually become ISIS.

As a member of Zarqawi’s terrorist group, Baghdadi was picked up and detained for five years by the U.S. in Camp Bucca in Iraq in 2004, where many al-Qaeda commanders were jailed. “”Prison sentences are opportunities for these people to meld ideologies, to develop friendships, to develop trust,” says Lauren Squires, research analyst at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington D.C. “Camp Bucca is where [Baghdadi] actually met a lot of his closest cohorts that are in ISIS now,”

Once a somewhat peripheral figure, Baghdadi has now become ISIS’s leading man, playing an instrumental part in gathering support for the militant group as it established its self-proclaimed caliphate in June. “He became a very public face to this organization that was rapidly growing,” says Squires, referring to Baghdadi’s notorious appearance in a video leading prayer at a mosque in Mosul in July. “So he was important in unifying and developing this group to get it off the ground.”

Baghdadi also claims to be a direct descendant of the Prophet Mohammed, naming himself “Caliph Ibrahim” in July, ruler of the Islamic State caliphate which gives him further legitimacy among the organization’s followers.

But Paul Rogers, professor of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford in the U.K., points out that while Baghdadi is very important, ISIS “is an organization that is both adaptive and robust.” Squires agrees, saying that the old Western strategy of cutting off the head of a snake no longer applies, because of how resilient ISIS has proven to be. Data from IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Center suggests that the U.S.-led coalition has failed to slow down the number of ISIS attacks, and body counts are higher than ever before. In Baghdadi’s recent audio message he claimed that “America and its allies are terrified, weak, and powerless.”

That resilience comes from the fact that the core leadership of ISIS is primarily made up of professionals who were elite members of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist government in Iraq. That gives the group a clear command and control structure, says Dargin.

Unlike al-Qaeda’s affiliate-based system, which operates through more independent cells in different parts of the world, ISIS is located in a tighter geographical area and has a more government-like, bureaucratic structure. That includes two major military and administrative bodies: the Shura Council and the Sharia Council. “What’s different [from al-Qaeda] is that the structure falls underneath one central command,” says Squires.

This leads her to believe that the most effective way to degrade a terrorist organization like ISIS “is by hitting the mid-level to senior-level leadership” repeatedly, in order to remove that echelon and ensure the group will not be able to reconstitute its leadership—rather than focusing solely on Baghdadi.

Researchers tell TIME that it’s very difficult to identify who would be the next viable successor in the event of Baghdadi’s death, but that they are certain ISIS has contingency plans and that it would only be a temporary setback for the group, especially in practical terms. “It is extremely important to remember that ISIS considers itself a “state,” and while it is not a state such as is recognizable anywhere else in the world, it would not allow itself to collapse because of the death of one leader,” says Dargin.

The death of Baghdadi could also feed into the religious beliefs of ISIS followers who extol martyrdom. Indeed, Squires believes his death may even increase “the global jihadi incentive to join and conduct retaliatory attacks.”

Of course, if Baghdadi is killed, many within ISIS and outside it may see his death as a strategic blow against the terrorist organization—and a successful attack would surely be trumpeted by the U.S. But as the group continues to increase its stronghold in Iraq and Syria, it seems that ISIS will remain a threat to the region for quite some time—with or without Baghdadi.

The globalization of Western eating habits is bad for human health and for the environment, according to a new study in the journal Nature. In the study, David Tilman, a University of Minnesota ecology professor, analyzed data from 100 countries to chart what people ate and how diet affected health. He noted a trend beginning in the 1960s: As nations industrialized, population increased and incomes rose. More people began to adopt the so-called Western diet, one high in refined sugar,...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Newly surfaced videos are adding fresh energy to the efforts of congressional conservatives to repeal President Barack Obama's health care law, feeding into their contentions that the overhaul was approved through a scheme of deception....

Cameron and Abbott try to prove their toughness to home audiences but they arent threatening Putin

Put 20 world leaders in the same city and the one thing you can guarantee is warship envy.

At this weeks G20 summit in Brisbane, Australias prime minister, Tony Abbott promised to shirt-front Vladimir Putin over the shooting down of the Malaysia Airlines plane over Ukraine. Not to be outdone, David Cameron has trash-talked the Russian premier for parking the Russian navy off the Queensland coast. Barack Obama has said nothing because he doesnt need to. Generally speaking, the more extravagant the warship waving, the smaller the warship, and the US president is quite comfortable with his size.

BRISBANE, Australia (AP) -- Vladimir Putin is underlining his presence at a major summit of world leaders in Australia by stationing warships in waters off the country's northeastern coast, prompting the Australian prime minister to angrily accuse Russia of trying to reclaim the "lost glories" of the Soviet Union....

»How did the Enigma machine work?14/11/14 20:44 from Mike Nova's Shared Newslinksmikenova shared this story from Network Front | The Guardian. On the day The Imitation Game hits cinemas, a look at how Allied codebreakers untangled the Enigma Like all the best cryptography, the Enigma machine is simple to describe, bu...

»Dylan Thomas manuscript found14/11/14 20:12 from Mike Nova's Shared Newslinksmikenova shared this story from CNN.com - World. A notebook full of work-in-progress versions of some of Dylan Thomas's key poems has been rediscovered more than 70 years after the poet's mother-in-law ordered it to be burnt.

»Why ISIS Can Survive Without Baghdadi14/11/14 19:35 from Mike Nova's Shared Newslinksmikenova shared this story from TIME. Amidst speculation that U.S.-led airstrikes had last week killed or injured Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), the group released an audio message...

»OSCE's Ukraine Drones Under Fire12/11/14 17:28 from Mike Nova's Shared Newslinksmikenova shared this story from WSJ.com: World News. The director of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said the group’s drones monitoring military activity in eastern Ukraine have been shot at and jammed, part of a ...

»US Sailors Attacked in Istanbul12/11/14 16:19 from Mike Nova's Shared Newslinksmikenova shared this story from Voice of America. Three U.S. sailors were assaulted Wednesday on the streets of Istanbul, Turkey, by a group of what the Pentagon is calling “thugs.” A Youtube video of the attack, appears to show young Tu...

»Prisoners write the inside story12/11/14 08:57 from Mike Nova's Shared Newslinksmikenova shared this story from Network Front | The Guardian. Two of this years entries to the Prison Reform Trusts annual writing competition, on prison libraries and being a mother in jail, are published here A competition run by the P...